Abuse of women emerging from cloak of shame

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For Huda Shaker, the humiliation began at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Baghdad. The American soldiers demanded to search her handbag. When she refused one of the soldiers pointed his gun towards her chest.

"He pointed the laser sight directly in the middle of my chest," said Professor Shaker, a political scientist at Baghdad University. "Then he pointed to his penis. He told me, 'Come here, bitch, I'm going to f--- you'."

The incident is one of a number in which US soldiers are alleged to have abused, intimidated or sexually humiliated Iraqi women.

Professor Shaker said several women held in Abu Ghraib jail were sexually abused, including one raped by an American military policeman who became pregnant. She has disappeared.

Most coverage of the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib has focused on Iraqi men. But there is compelling evidence that several female prisoners, who are in a minority at the jail, were also abused.

"Ladies here are afraid and shy of talking about such subjects," said Professor Shaker, who is researching the subject for Amnesty International. "They say everything is OK. Even in a very advanced society in the West it is very difficult to talk about rape. But I think it happened."

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Few women released from US detention have come forward to talk about their experiences. In Muslim societies rape is sometimes equated with shame.

The magazine The New Yorker says unreleased photos and videos show American soldiers "having sex with a female Iraqi prisoner". A secret report by General Antonio Taguba confirms that "a male MP [military police] guard" is shown "having sex with a female detainee".

Human rights campaigners say the US military often arrests wives and daughters during raids if the male suspect is not at home. US officials have acknowledged detaining women in the hope of persuading male relatives to provide information, a strategy that violates international law.

US military officers at Abu Ghraib admitted on Monday that rape had taken place in the cellblock where 19 "high-value" male detainees are also held.

Asked how it could have happened, Colonel Dave Quantock, who helps to run the prison, said: "I don't know. It's all about leadership. Apparently it wasn't there."

Journalists were forbidden from talking to the women, who are kept upstairs in windowless 2.5-metre-by-1.5-metre cells. The women wailed and shouted.